Leader of the UDAR Party Vitali Klitschko believes that a trade war with Ukraine has been unleashed by the Russian Federation in order to prevent Ukraine from signing an association agreement with the European Union at the forthcoming summit in Vilnius.

"This is a political issue and this has been done with only one goal - to do everything so that the association agreement with the EU should not be signed in Vilnius. For us, the signing of this agreement is a strategic priority," Klitschko said at a press briefing in Lviv, answering a question from Interfax-Ukraine.

According to him, the relations between the two countries - Russia and Ukraine - should be based on good neighborliness and mutual benefit, and not on political pressure.